Penguin!

I saw my first penguin in Antarctica! They say that the penguins arrive after the icebreaker comes in. The icebreaker arrived Sunday. The penguin was here Monday. It's a little adelie penguin. I watched it for about an hour an a half. First it was asleep in a ball like a little black cat. Then it stood up, stretched a wing. Later it raised both wings. Later yet it crowed like a crow. Still later it took a few steps, got into the water for a short swim, got out, and stood some more.

Below is the penguin with the icebreaker that arrived from Sweden.

How Cold Is It?

Just how cold is it in Antarctica? Not very right now--January. Temps are in the high 30's F just about every day. And with the sun up all the time, it feels very nice. Above is Pat fixing some field camp equipment. Kind of looks like a palm tree, doesn't it?

Above is Matt, our dorm's janitor, in shorts and a parka. Notice that he's standing on dirt--not ice and snow. McMurdo station has been more dust than ice for a couple months now. In the background is the frozen sea ice and mountains.

At the New Year's music festival, there was some warm weather dressing. Note the Hawaiian shirt.

Also at the music festival were sandals and shorts.

Just had to include this music festival guy.

Here are two of the guys that Carol works with--Tom the plumbing foreman and Don the boiler mechanic. The wind came up at the music festival, so even though the temp wasn't so cold, the wind was!

Christmas in Antarctica

In Antarctica Christmas comes a day earlier than in the US. In the lower left of this pictures are carolers. The background is frozen sea ice.

Penguins are just about the favorite animal, and these are in the dining room.

The theme of the day was food, of course. Here we are at brunch. Stockings are in the background. There is a tree, but it missed the picture.

This is a a display of gingerbread houses. Below is a spread of exotic cheeses and lots of other delicacies.

We ate the huge Christmas dinner in "family groups." These are new and wonderful friends. We had prime rib, roast, duck, crab legs, shrimp, all the trimmings, and more desserts than could be counted.

Science Camp

One of the extremely cool things we were hoping to do! get close to a science team, and go out with them. This is Pat's ride out to Heald Island, in the Koettlitz glacier to help launch an under-ice rover camera.
The passengers had to wear the same sharp helmets as the pilots.
The rover is launched through a simple, small, hand-drilled hole. Other rovers being tested down here need huge support equipment, and an eight foot wide hole.
Most of the ice we are working in is pure crystalline blue, but some parts of it have sponge-like formations of air bubbles. These are about a foot down into the ice. You are looking at an area two feet wide.
The equipment is being assembled and tested. The rover is the small cylinder with holes all over it. Pat machined the holes to reduce its weight, and help to make it neutral bouyancy. He also designed and built the cradle it sets on for testing.
Launching the rover.
An edge of the Koettlitz glacier, and beyond it, the mountains forming the Antarctic Dry Valleys.
Some of hundreds of blue melt pools, now frozen, within a rift in the glacier. Mt Discovery beyond, about 14 miles away.
Looking across the quarter-mile wide rift, and the melt pools to the camp tent.
The ride home is landing.

Ice Dive

We have become acquainted with a dive team that looks at what's in the ocean here under the ice. The have two dive huts off the shore on the ice here.

Inside the hut on the left is the hole for the divers to descend. Inside the hut on the right is the hole where they lower the self-propelled camera that is steered by a person who stays above. They can see on a screen in the hut what the camera sees below.

Here's the hole that the divers use. Looks chilly, doesn't it. The ice here is 20 feet thick. The water below it is 28 degrees.

These divers are Stacy, the head of the team, and Francois.

Stacy is putting on her flippers.

They get ready to descend.

Holly is a "dive tender," a volunteer who helps the diver get dressed.

Stacy jumps into the hole.

From the other hut we can look at what the camera is seeing. The divers say there is plenty of life down there. They like diving here because the water is very clear and there's no algae. The box in the picture is a wire frame on the front of the camera--a crash bar so it doesn't get hurt when it hits bottom. The camera is steered by a person above the ice. Carol got to "drive" it. It's like playing a video game.

Here the camera is looking up the hole that the divers went down. Again, the box is the camera's protective frame.

The dive tenders above were mighty surprised when something--which turned out to be the camera--came UP the hole!

Stunning Ice Formations

This week Carol got to go on a special trip to the New Zealand base here to see special ice formations made by layers of sea ice pushing against each other.
The result is that huge chunks of ice get pushed up. You can see how big they care compared to people. We're standing on the ocean here. It's many, many feet frozen beneath us.

This is the favorite formation--looks like a sitting frog.

Some of the formations were blocks.

Some of the newer ones are a gorgeous color of blue.

This is beautiful with the sun shining through.

Some formations were pointy.

And sometimes the points were in a row.

Sometimes the ice was split.

The place made me think of a white, shiny version of the rock formations at Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs.

Scavenging in Antarctica

All of the trash from McMurdo Station has to be shipped back to California. That's because they found that the garbage they used to put in the ocean or bury doesn't disintegrate because of the cold. Back in 1991-91, Pat was here as an engineer building an incinerator, but that was abandoned because burning was frowned upon. This picture is taken from the Waste Department, where they sort every piece of trash and prepare it for shipment back to the US. Some of it for obvious reasons gets frozen for the trip. In the background is the spectacular ocean and mountains.

There is a wonderful tradition of recycling useable clothes and goods here called Skua. It's named after a scavenger bird, called the Skua. There are two nesting pairs here, and the story is that the same birds come back year after year. They know where people come out of the dining room with plates of food. I met my first one flying right in front of my face as it was checking out what was in my hands. It turned out to be my mittens, so it didn't stick around. Notice that the bird is about the same color as the soil, which is volcanic rock.

There are "skua bins" in every building. Everyone is expected to sort their trash into food, recyclable paper, non-recyclyable paper (papertowels), plastic, glass, aluminum cans, other metal, etc. In our dorm there are 14 different bins. The janitors empty the bins and take everything to the Waste Dept or to "Skua Central," the building where all reusable items are available for anyone to take.

Skua Central is like a free Goodwill store. You just take anything you like. Most people here dress in Skua clothes, because the work here can be hard on personal clothes. I have several pairs of Skua jeans, and some shirts.

Finding parts for work can be a scavenging operation as well. Some parts locations are very well documented. Others, such as nuts and bolts, tend to be just thrown together. This makes me miss having a local hardware. It also makes me think of a hardware store employee who was listening to an old guy complain about the price of a screw. "Why, that's robbery. I have 20 of those at home," grumbled the old man.

"Yes," replied the employee very nicely,"but you can't find them, can you?" Here we find them eventually. When I get frustrated about how long it takes to find a part, I add up how long it would take me to drive to the hardware store at home and back, and decided that it's probably faster rummagine through the misc parts drawers in three buildings here! And there's no traffic congestion. In fact, no traffic!